rade

Once the past had stayed where it belonged— dead and buried and gone. Though it returned each night to haunt him in his dreams, it always yielded to the cold weight of reality when he woke. To the heaviness of the crown he could not surrender, though that burden had crushed far greater men. Leaders who had never struggled beneath a suffocating shroud of regrets, kings who didn’t know the bone-deep weariness that came with age and time. Together, these three things might have succeeded in breaking the scarred roan, if not for the adamantine thread of his will. But though he kept staggering determinedly on, day by day— moment by moment— Rade grew weaker, worn. He still schemed and fought and tried, but could feel his mind slipping slowly from his grasp.

Slipping back into the warm and welcome oblivion of his memories.

Jaws was warm and comforting and more real than anything he’d touched for a long time. But the golden stallion still uncurled himself from the hollow that they’d shared overnight, still left her as the sky began to lighten from black to grey. His chest as cold and empty as the space beyond their bed, Rade walked without purpose or direction. Chasing the shadows of his home, and seeing the faces of creatures long-gone within them. He waded through muck and saw Thane, whose attempts to break him had only remade him. Stopped to drink at a shallow pool beside Fatale, the only woman who’d ever understood him. Pressed through a copse of brambles and glimpsed his brother Conquistador, shrunk back into the boy he’d been. And then felt the ground slope gently beneath his hooves and climbed upward with stumbling steps, breath burning in his lungs and serrated in his throat—

—and stood face to face with Felony, whose fierce golden eyes bored into his own accusingly.

The old bachelor’s heart leapt into his throat, beating frantically as it sought an escape from its bone cage. But Rade— Rade was held motionless, powerless by that familiar gaze and the hard truths it contained. You abandoned me, the painted stallion seemed to say even in silence. You claimed to be better than Cullen, but neither of you could be bothered with those who were taken. "I— I stayed with you," the palomino argued against these imagined words, his voice a ragged whisper. But how could his willing surrender compare to the betrayal Cullen’s men had endured? As much as he'd played the part of captive, Rade had been free to walk away from the Peak at any time. And he had, in the end. He had.

"I fought for you." With little hope of victory and against the strongest warrior the Vulcans could offer, he’d fought. But what difference had that effort truly made, in the end? To those held prisoner, it had made none at all. He’d failed, and the knowledge of that failure twisted within him now, forcing the air from his lungs in a broken little sound.

"I tried to free you. I tried. Forgive me, brother."

Limping forward, Rade reached for the dark curve of Felony's muzzle and whatever absolution that touch might offer.

stallion / palomino roan / arab mix / 15.1 hh